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How to Become Successful, Seriously (FS198)

Might sound crazy, but in this podcast we literally teach you how to be successful.

Simple as that.

You want to become successful.

You want to make headway towards your goal.

You want to feel inspired and insightful about the work you do.

You want to live life on your terms, employ your own damn self, define your own lifestyle.

In this podcast we teach you — as I said — literally how to do that… how to get successful.

It’s a deep dive into what we mean when we say “successful,” how that word bamboozles us, hoodwinks us and we lose touch with the very thing that’s going to contribute most to genuine success in our lives.

BTW, this is not, like, some “The Secret” stuff or some pie-in-the-sky power of positivity… it’s cold hard empiricism and experience, but with real heart.

You’re gonna like it. Make a cup of tea or coffee, invest an hour now in real, lasting success, and let’s dig in.

Listen to the episode:

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Chase: Listen. Here’s something I want us all to do. Okay. You two, Steph and Corbett. This is what I want you to do. I want you to do this, all right? Everybody listening, no matter what you’re doing, I want you to think about what is the next thing for you right now. You know this. It’s either a project that you’re working on or maybe it’s something personal. I don’t know what it is. It’s just it’s the thing that’s been in your mind rattling around for a while and you just know you need to do that. What is the one thing? All right? Then, I want you to simplify that down into one word. You won’t have to explain it. You won’t have to explain it to me or anybody. You just need to have it one word. It means what it means for you, so one thing, one word. All right? You guys have that?

Steph: I have a clarifying question.

Corbett: I wouldn’t know.

Chase: You have a clarifying question? Bring it on.

Steph: Yes. By one …

Corbett: Of course, you do.

Steph: Teacher’s pet over here. By one thing we need to do, do you mean like … Give us some more. Do you mean like anything?

Chase: Just like don’t ask questions, Steph. Do look in your heart.

Steph: Okay. All right. Okay.

Chase: What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing for you?

Steph: You know there’s people out there who had the same question. I’ve got those people’s backs.

Chase: Yeah. When I did it live, I got that same exact question. I’m like, “Trust yourself. What’s the one thing? What’s loudest inside of you right now?” All right? You’re looking for the one thing, and you’re trying to get it down into one word, and so tell me when you guys have it. Corbett, do you have your one thing, one word?

Corbett: Yeah.

Chase: What is it?

Corbett: Yes, sir. It’s “commit.”

Chase: Commit? Got it, got it. Commit. Steph, do you have yours?

Steph: I do.

Chase: What is it?

Steph: It’s so lame.

Chase: I love that. I love that. Why do you think it’s lame? Why do you think it’s lame?

Steph: Because it’s hard. It’s very hard to capture this in one word.

Chase: Yeah. Okay. Cool, cool. I like this, by the way, this exercise a lot for anybody listening of getting to one word. Let a project be one word or let your … Like what you need to do next, distill it down to one word. It’s just this little mental exercise that forces you to focus in just that really clarifying way. What’s yours, Steph? What is it?

Steph: It’s “fitness.”

Chase: Got it. Love it. Love it. Okay. Now, listeners, I wanted you to do that same exact thing. One word, your next thing. Okay? Because basically, success in that thing and whatever that thing is going to … you want it to be, right, whatever it’s going to be, success naturally turns into one of two directions, and they have the same root. I don’t know exactly what that root is.

Basically, when we talk about success culturally like just mass culturally, what we’re talking about is either enough people like it like it’s popular enough, right, or it is making enough money like I … It’s wealthy, and it’s making enough money for me, right? Success, normally, when we use the term “success,” what we’re talking about is either it’s popular or it’s making money. Normally, some combination of the both, right?

Corbett: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chase: This is what like the term just naturally happens to be like culturally when we use the word “success,” so success in that project. That one word, one thing, a thing for all of you listeners and you two here will naturally just like … It’s almost like the word just get like … You don’t feel good about it unless it’s got enough people, it’s popular enough, or it’s making enough money, right?

Wait a second, but we could do this other thing. Okay. Now, think about your one word, Steph and Corbett. Think about this project that you have or this next thing, every listener, and I want you to try to write down something a little bit harder. This one actually takes a little bit more work. What would make that thing, what would make that one thing a success to you? All right?

Think about that. You’ve got your one thing. You’ve got your one word about that thing, and then you’re like, “What would make that a success to you?” Okay? By the way, this is the reason why you want Ira Glass. You don’t know it yet, but you want Ira Glass. I’m going to get into that in a second, but first, I want to ask if either of you is comfortable sharing like what success on your one thing would look like for you? Any takers?

Steph: I’m still thinking.

Corbett: Is this getting one word? We didn’t …

Chase: No, no. Sorry. Not one word on this one. Just like what would make this one successful to you? What would make this success to you? I’m not speaking [crosstalk 00: 04: 27].

Corbett: Without any context about what that thing is?

Chase: Yeah. No, just like to you personally. Okay? Write it to yourself like, “This would feel successful to me. I would feel successful about this, or that this was a success if this, if that, if …” Right?

Corbett: Yeah.

Chase: What are the things that would make that thing a success for you?

Corbett: Okay.

Chase: What do you think?

Steph: Okay.

Chase: What comes to mind? Obviously, this takes some time to deliver, but just like what comes to mind for you, Corbett?

Corbett: Okay. For me, my word was “commit,” and so what would make that successful for me is if the thing that I committed to was defined in such a way that it led to success for that project later, so [crosstalk 00: 05: 12] do is commit.

Chase: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Corbett: It’s all about defining that thing well.

Chase: I love that. I love how you really like … You’re used to this to like shaving things down, to whittling down to like what’s the very next step, right?

Corbett: Yeah.

Chase: Now, you could do that same exact thing for that project at large, right?

Corbett: Right.

Chase: The project you wanted to commit to. Now, you can ask like, “Okay, so what would make that thing a success?” What about you, Steph? What things came to mind when you’re thinking this one thing, fitness or whatever it represents to you? What would make that a success to you personally?

Steph: Maybe not surprisingly given how you know me. I think what comes to mind for me is I have to start visualize what I feel like if I have gotten to a place where I achieved the goal that’s in my mind, right?

Chase: Yeah.

Steph: For me, like I started to step into like what it would feel like to achieve this goal, and for me, I have feelings like comfortable in my body. I feel strong, and I feel rested. Those are the things that come to mind.

Steph: I could probably draw a pretty good crowd of parents for that one.

Chase: Ooh, we just start making podcasts that just have like great words in them.

Corbett: Yeah, in one episode.

Steph: Yup.

Chase: Yeah. Okay. I love this. Thank you guys so much for sharing this stuff. What that is for me is just an exercise in … Okay. Success in stuff like just naturally is something out there, some like feeling. I don’t know. I’ll probably know it when I have it, but I don’t have it yet. All of a sudden, with a little bit of exercise, you can go like, “Oh, this is what would make this thing a success to me. If I feel comfortable, strong, and rested.” Right?

Steph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chase: Do you feel comfortable, strong, and rested?

Steph: I am getting closer. I’m not all the way there.

Chase: You can measure your own success that way?

Steph: Yes.

Chase: Right?

Steph: Yup.

Chase: Do you see what just happened? Like you just took this whole thing back from whatever, the world or other than you that the project turns into, right? Like a lot of us are always looking outside of ourselves for validation of what we’re doing both whether we’re doing the right thing and if what we’re doing matters enough, right, if we’re “successful” in that thing.

I think a lot of becoming successful in my own way for me has meant, “Oh, I can see that I’m already successful, but I don’t feel like it,” right? Depending on my perspective like I can go like, “Oh, I’m already successful,” but from another perspective, I’m like, “But I don’t feel successful at all because that guy has a bigger boat than me, or they have a larger podcast, or that business is branded better than mine, or I’m always going to play second for these people.” You know what I mean?

Steph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chase: We can define our own success of these things, which is just by simply asking. We have a whole podcast on how do you define your own success, which is awesome conversation, and this is a continuation of that, but it’s simply by asking, “What would make this a success to you?” Right? I think this is why you want Ira Glass, dear listener, even if you don’t know who Ira Glass is and that Ira Glass is in fact a name of a person, right?

Ira Glass is the creator, producer of This American Life. Okay? Now, what Ira Glass decided to do was to be great at story. Okay? Ira Glass from … Like you can hear these old recordings of him on like Trans Am Radio Podcasts and stuff where he’s talking about where it’s just like back in the day, vintage recordings of him going like what he likes about story, what he’s learning about radio, this kind of stuff.

Ever since the beginning, he’s been just like … He limited himself almost. He was like, “If I could just be great at story and radio, I would be satisfied,” right? Now, I think that’s really powerful. He chose story over success in some ways, right? He chose being great at something over just being great. Do you know what I mean? Like everybody wants to be great. Dear listener, you want to be great. I get it. That doesn’t make you special at all. You want to be successful. Duh, duh. Get in line, right? Steph, Corbett, Chase. Everybody wants to be successful. Everybody wants to be great, but what Ira Glass wanted was to be great at something, and I think that makes all the difference.

Okay, so let me tell you about my life. First blog that I started that was like a real like, “I’m going to try to do a blog thing,” was called “Father Apprentice.” Okay? It was a site for new dads who wanted to be great. Okay? Like my only effort, my only goal in this thing, my only goal in this was to create a website that was both funny and deep. It was funny. It was cynical in some ways like, “God, dude, this kid is ruining my life.” Very Louis C.K. that way like talking about like how upset I am about my life. At the same time though, totally deep about how this kid is changing my life, and I didn’t even know I was capable of experiencing love like this.

That was my only goal with this thing. My strategy, my only strategy was like, “Well, I’m going to do that, and if I get successful like I’ll be ready to be on stage doing the whole like, ‘You know, I don’t know. I just started doing my thing, and all of a sudden, bam, bam, I was successful. I don’t know.’” Like that kind of story was what I was aiming at. Like if I get successful, it would be because of that.

I got exactly what I wanted with that blog, right? I got exactly what I thought I wanted like I had the respect of a few people, people who were reading my thing. It didn’t grow very much, but that’s not something I wanted out of it. I guess I got exactly what I thought I wanted out of that thing, and I’d seen … Let’s switch gears here.

The same thing is true with my marriage actually. I wanted to have a good marriage. I want to have a good marriage, and so what it means is I’m like I know I have to work hard on my marriage, and so I got exactly what I want, a marriage that I work on. Do you know what I mean?

The same thing happened with my guitar playing. A lot of people don’t know this about me, you guys. A lot of people don’t know this about me. Corbett seen like little fits and starts of this, but the first half of my life, I spent studying the guitar like I went super hard on guitar. I’m a little bit of a secret shredder on the guitar, right? I got exactly what I wanted out of that. I got good at guitar.

I look back because I’m like, “I could have dreamed a different dream. Maybe a bigger dream. Maybe a dream that was more true to me.” instead, I dreamed, “I want to be good at guitar.” What I could have said was like, “I want to make music my friends fall in love to.” Right? That. I would pursue guitar very differently then, right? I could have said, “What I want is I want to make … I want to talk about my pain in music, so it’s approachable to other people, and that in that like I can like tell other people’s pain too through music.” Right?

I could have dreamed a dream like there. I could have said, “That’s the one I want. That’s the success that I’m defining,” but instead, I never sat down and defined like, “Here’s what I want from this. Here’s what I want from guitar,” right? Because if I did, I probably would have realized my intention was deeper than, “I want to get good at guitar.” Do you know what I mean? I never did, so all I got was I got good at guitar.

I think a lot of the times, we do this. We’re doing this right now in our businesses, the things that we want to create in our personal lives. Like I said, in my marriage like, “Do I want a marriage that I work on? No. I want a great marriage. What’s a great marriage? All right. Let’s define what that looks like,” instead of like just being one who’s like, “it’s awesome. I’m committed to do the hard work of working on my marriage.” Like towards what though? Define towards what? I can do that with my wife.

Same thing with my business. I can define what I’m doing this for. With the guitar, I want to write songs that tell the truth about me. I want to write songs my friends fall in love to like just music for my friends that they would like, right? These are different dreams, and then they like … or to use the metaphor like we’ve been using. These are different definitions of what success in this project would look like.

What I’ve learned from looking at these things is that yeah, we get what we think we want. The question that should be in your mind is like, “What do I think I want, and is that really what I want?” Okay? Because this is, again, why we love Ira Glass, why Ira Glass to me is a personal hero, a picture of what success can look like and should look like, the way that I’m actively working to take back my definition of success from the world, from culture and make it look more like what Ira Glass has done, which is he got great at something. He picked what he wanted to be great at, and then he got great at that thing.

The same thing with Steph like fitness could totally … If that’s one of your things that you’re working on, defining success like that, if you don’t define it, how will you know when you’re fit enough? How will you know if you’re doing a good enough job? How do you know? For me, personally, when I’m stuck in that treadmill of like, “Is it enough? I could do more, so it’s not enough. Let’s keep going.” I’m not feeling the things that I want to feel.

Ira Glass chose story over success. It’s sad to say it that way. I like it because it’s story over success, but the thing is it’s not like he chose a better story. No. He like wanted to be good at story, right, the way that I like wanted to be good at guitar, and that’s where my vision stopped, and that’s why I don’t play guitar anymore. Do you know what I mean?

That’s why I just noodle on it from time to time, but I have a bigger dream, a dream I’m much more excited, resonate at much deeper levels with for my business, for my family that now, those are my big dreams. Those are the things I’m heading towards and I’m actively defining those things. Okay? Which is, by the way, what our journaling webinar is going to be about, how to make this a daily practice of reminding ourselves, “What is our definition of success? Why are so pumped to get to there, and then how do we … so what do we do today about it?” Right?

Here’s my closing thing, okay? You define what success is or you will never feel what you want to feel. I think what we all want is we want to feel like we want to feel certain things. We want to feel successful. We want to feel ourselves. We want to feel comfortable, strong, and rested. We want to feel certain things. Unless we define what success is going to be for us in all the projects that we do, the definition of success will belong outside of ourselves, and we’ll be constantly trying to impress that outside force, and it’s not a real force. It’s not a real thing, and it’s never ever, it’s never satisfied with what you’ve done.

However, you can pull these things back. You can define your own success. You can take that power back. “What will make this project a success to me?” Now, you can actually feel those things because you can make yourself proud, and I think that’s one of these like really powerful things we can do in our business world that nobody is talking about. Like you can define what you would be proud of yourself in this project as.

For instance, when I wrote down … When I was making this speech that I’m butchering in some ways, but also trying to do it in a natural way for the podcast, I got like most of the way through defining this thing, and then I realized, “Oh my god, I did not define what success for me in this project would be,” right? I went back, and on the top of the page, I have written here like, “Success equals,” and then, “Here are the things that would make this a success for me.” I knew I would be in a room with a bunch of real people who are really working on their businesses and they’re already supporting themselves fulltime doing this thing, and they’re all struggling. Every one of us, right?

I thought, “What would make this a success to me? It would be a success for me if I had fun, if I tell the truth, if I be myself and don’t lose myself trying to make people like me or think I’m wise beyond my years, if I’m rooted in love, if I have hope for these people, like if I realized that this is a thing that’s catchable by them.” Right? These are the kinds of things I wrote down for like … and guess what? I nailed it. Whoops, we need a little marker. I nailed it. One of my favorite podcast comedian guys, Pete Holmes. He does this thing where he’s just like, “Do you think Joel Osteen ever gets off the stage and says, ‘That’s how you do it, mother …?”

Corbett: Yeah.

Chase: I just love that idea of just like Joel Osteen just coming on and going like, “Yes. That’s how you do it, mother …” Immediately after that, I went … After I delivered the message or whatever, all the group … The event was broke out into these groups. By the way, this is … The event was called the “GO Summit,” GO Summit, and I love this event. Go to it if you can get tickets next year. Get on their list right now and just make it a thing to do it.

Anyway, so it was all broken up into tables after my thing. Everybody was talking with their tables, and there was a coach at each table that’s facilitating the conversation, so everybody was doing stuff. Then, I walked off-stage, and I looked over at my friend, David [Tosdy 00: 20: 21], and I was like, “That’s how you do it, mother …” because I did exactly what I … Like I made myself proud. I defined what would make me proud about this, and then I did that, right? I don’t care if I could have been more, if I could have done better like all of that goes away. When I’m like I know … Like I defined my own success for this thing, okay?

The whole gist is this, okay? Success means either people like it or makes enough money unless you define, “What would make this a success to me?” That’s just like on a practical project-based level, but where that really gets profound for me is when you think about your life, when you think about, “What’s the life I want to live? What would make my life a success to me?” Right? Okay?

Ira Glass did this. He chose story over success, and it led to success for him, right? He chose to pursue being great at something instead of just being great. You, dear listener, are like all of us. You want to be great. You already know you are great. What you really want is the rest of the world to know that about you, right? A lot of this has to come from like realizing where you’re already great, and then going like, “What would make me feel greater still that’s mine to control?”

It doesn’t mean like, “Oh, I got more Twitter followers now.” If that would make you feel great, you can control that then. You can go, “I’m making my life about more Twitter followers.” Set a good goal though. I have more Twitter followers. I still have the same conundrum that I had before, which is like, “Why do I hate myself and my life? Why do I feel like I need to work so hard for what?” I don’t know, right?

Be like Ira Glass. Screw greatness and decide to pursue becoming great at something. Bonus points if you make it something you love. That was my message that I gave at GO Summit. I’m opening this up now for questions and conversations. What should we talk about?

Steph: Oh, man. This is awesome. I’m like furiously writing things down just so you know.

Chase: Yeah, so where do you want to jump in first? What touches you?

Steph: I think it’s so great, but I think one … I’m over here thinking to myself, “This all makes sense, but like why do we get off track? Why do we set goals?”

Corbett: Ooh, yeah.

Steph: Why do we look for outside validation? For me, like when you were talking early on, Chase, the thing that I wrote down was we have the answers, and I think this is really powerful. We’ve talked about this before where sometimes, and this happens all the time in Fizzle and when we’re talking about business, people are like, “Well, I have this idea, and that idea, and this other idea, and I don’t know which thing to do, so like what thing do you think I should do?”

People ask some variation of this question all the time, and what we’re saying here I think is you have the answer. It’s just like when I wrote down fitness, and then I wrote down, “I want to feel comfortable, strong, and rested,” I knew what that meant to me. I didn’t need you, or Corbett, or anybody to tell me what that meant to me. I have that answer.

Corbett: Yeah.

Steph: For me, the question is like, “How do we get away from that? Like why does that happen?” I almost think that in some ways, we … so we have this inherent ability to … or we’re like born maybe with this gift of knowing the answers. We have intuition. We know if we really get quiet and think about what we should do, we can figure out what the answer as it tends to come to us instinctually, but I think we get away from that because we stopped trusting ourselves, and somehow, we think to ourselves like, “Well, I can’t possibly know what’s best for me. Somebody else must know what’s better for me,” and that’s where I think we start turning towards outside validation. I think that’s where it comes from.

I think that it comes back to … It really is just this difference between finding the answers within and allowing your gut and your instincts to drive that versus are you feeling like you don’t have the answer because you don’t trust what’s coming up when you write down the thing at the beginning of this exercise because I think that’s where outside validation comes from is you think, “There must be somebody out there who knows what I should do better than me,” but I don’t think that’s the case and no matter what your goal is.

Part of this I think is making sure that your goals are self-contained enough to be … You used the words outside force, and I think this comes back to controlling what you can control. We like to think … I’ve said this on this podcast before. We like to think we can control the outcome, and we can’t. The only way you can control the outcome is by controlling what goes into it. You control the effort you put in. You control the intention. You do not control the outcome. The outcome flows from all the work that you do upfront. I don’t know. Those are just some initial thoughts for me, but it’s very powerful and I love it.

Chase: Yeah. I like that. Corbett, I want to ask Steph’s question. What do you think about that question? Like if we have the answers like if we … because you’re someone who I see as like you’re constantly … You’ve changed your whole life, you and your wife both, around like, “Wait. What do we want out of life? Like I want to live life on my terms,” and you’ve done that like strategically, consistently, and diligently over the past decade, right?

In some ways, I see you as someone who’s been on this path of like pursuing what you want out of life, and I want to know. Where do you think … Maybe even I can word it like this. What do you know about staying on track with your goals or the things that you want that most people don’t know?

Corbett: It’s a good question. As you were saying this, I think my big takeaway was what Steph just wrapped up with, which is the only thing we should focus on are those things which we can control. To me, whether or not you achieve those things, that’s what should define success for you. That doesn’t mean that you don’t want other things and that you don’t have a bigger vision.

For example, you talked about playing guitar. If your goal, if your bigger goal for playing guitar was to, let’s say, earn a fulltime living doing it, you would have to know that that’s not something you can directly control because there are just too many variables, right?

Chase: Yeah. Yeah.

Corbett: There’s too many ups and downs that happen along the career of a musician especially, so the only thing that you can control would be something like getting really good at guitar, and then in addition to that, producing actual albums, or working in a great band, or something. Getting a job with a great band or something.

Chase: Yeah, yeah.

Corbett: Those are the things that you have to focus on. I think where we fall down is that we aren’t taught how to measure success for ourselves. Mostly, in school and when we’re younger, we’re taught that success is what other people think of us, right? Especially in middle school, it’s such a formative experience, and basically, all you do is feel shamed for kids like laughing at you, or pointing at you, or whatever because of what you wore that day, or something dumb that you said, or something that you did.

I think we carry that around, and then when we set goals for ourselves, deep down, that’s really what we want is to like please our middle school selves and our middle school friends or whatever. It’s a shame. It’s too bad that we’re not taught back then to think for ourselves and that individuality is important. I think that’s what a lot of parents are looking for in schools these days, trying to send their kids to places where whoever is least ridiculed is most successful doesn’t exist.

I don’t know. I think at some point, disconnecting from that aspect of society was a big factor for me like unplugging from the corporate world, unplugging from living like everyone else really allows you to make up your own goals because there’s no one there judging you. They can’t really judge you because it’s so different, and I have had that experience where some friends who … where I was a lot like them, and then as we started to pull away to live a very different life, we were judged in certain ways by those people, and it took a while for us to be … for our friendship to grow again like it was because both of us had to get used to the fact that we were no longer competing in a way in the same … or validating each other because we were living the same kind of lives.

Chase: Yeah. Now, I’m really curious or interested in how are our … We just recently did some planning for the … basically, the year, the whole year of 2017. We probably have our projects. The ones we want to do are hard to find at this point, but that process was one of looking at our business reality, right? In order for us to continue to do this, we have to earn revenue, so that’s one of the things we have to do.

The other thing in order for us to keep doing this, we have to like not burn out individually. We can’t just be doing stuff that we hate because one or all of us will start to burn out, and that will shred our team to bits, and our team is what’s so good at accomplishing this stuff, right? That’s one of these other pillars. There was three in the keynote that you put together, Corbett. What was the third that I’m not remembering right now?

Corbett: The third, and it’s the foundation. It’s the most important, which is helping our members achieve meaningful results.

Chase: Oh, yeah. Exactly, so this is like … This is the thing we do that … That’s our first pillar is the thing we do for others, for our customers, which the second pillar comes from, which is like earning the revenue from that, that service performed, and then the third being how we just feel overtime consistently about working on these things because this is … We desire for this place to be a place that like we’re working for it and we enjoy it like we love it.

It’s like as good as a game of golf. Like it’s both fun, and meaningful, and playful, and it hits all those things, especially that significance, that contribution bucket. That’s an important thing that we can do here that we can’t do with playing golf necessarily. Do you know what I mean? What’s curious to me is as we were defining our projects, what we basically did was each of us just brought projects that we knew we cared about and we thought would be really, really cool to do that we thought should exist in the world, that we thought is going to improve our standings in one of these pillars, right? Either the service we perform for people, or our business’s capability of earning revenue, or how we feel about working general.

To me, that very much felt like the same kind of process, so not only is it like, “Okay. This one thing that I have to do, what would make this a success to me?” It’s this other process, which is like, “What is my one thing?” or like, “What is like my next thing?” That first question that I started with, right? “What are the things that I want to be committed to?” instead of, “What are the things that I feel obligated to do that I know I should do?”

I feel like a lot of success and happiness for me like both of those, like to do both of those is challenging. To be both successful and happy requires a lot of, “Nope, I am not going to let myself feel guilty for not doing that. That’s just not the kind of thing I’m doing anymore.” Do you know what I mean? Like you have to take back from culture or from whatever, other people’s expectations like things that they think you should be responsible to do, and you’re like, “No, it couldn’t be ours to do that because I’m focusing on this, and this, and this.” Right?

A silly example of this would be like all of the podcast asks that we get to be interviewed on podcasts, and I love to be on podcasts with you. I love talking about stuff. I love hearing the way they think about my life and helping them think more honestly about success, and business, and things like that, but that’s like half a day gone in just like getting ready, setting up, not being … Like if I could have that hour that was plowed onto the end of a two-hour planning session for one of our real projects like I just lost something significant, and I go, “I am focusing on the things that I am focusing on, and I don’t have time for everything.”

This is like one of the natural things that success has started to do for me is made me really think heavily about, “What are the things I’m allowing myself to be committed to or to be expected of in some ways?” but I love … By the way, I love … Where I think this whole thing has worked out is in my journaling process, right? By the way, guys, guys … Hey, where my dudes at? Guys, this is not … Like when I say journaling process, I’m talking about something that is … I don’t know. You don’t have to see like polka dot like notebook covers or something like that.

What I do is I have a very manly, masculine Moleskin notebook, a large notebook that I use. What’s amazing about this though is just these practices of reminding myself every day, “What am I about?” because I forget. Inevitably, all the time, I forget. “What am I about? Oh, yeah. That’s right. I’m about this. I’m about this. I’m about this. I’m about this.” Right?

One of the things that I love doing in the morning is I love just reframing what work can feel like, and I get … I just start it with like, “I get to work at Fizzle.” Right? Which takes me into, “I get to influence real people with real hearts who have real hopes and real fears about businesses on their past to like actual freedom, to actual freedom, to actual self-actualization.” Right? “I get to work with Corbett and Steph. These people make room for me. I love working with them.” Right?

Just reframing some of that with my values or affirmations. Whatever you want to call it. It has like such a profound effect on then how I … Then, when I lift up my head and go like, “So, what am I working on today?” I can realize with total clarity it seems like for a while at least that … Normally, what I’ll do is I’ll go like, “What do I feel like working on?” and then I’m looking at that. If I see that same thing come up a few times, then I’m like, “This is something I’ve got to commit to. This is something I’ve got to commit to because it’s in me and it fits on all of the values that we have.” Et cetera, et cetera.

All that to say you got to get on the email list to get into this webinar. Even if you can’t make the webinar, we’re going to be sending out a recording of it. Okay? Go to fizzleshow.co/198 and get on the email list because we’re going to send an email out as soon as we’d lockdown the time and the place for this thing that Steph and I are both going to do, and I love that, by the way, Steph, that you’re going to show your thing, which is actually different than mine.

Steph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Corbett: I’m going to show mine, so people are … because the whole point of this is you find out your own way to do it. You find out what works for you about it, and I love that.

Steph: Yup.

Chase: I love that. This isn’t like teaching you how to do one method, but I think that … What that is to me, that’s where the rubber hits the road or where the rollerball pen hits the paper. Did I just do a dad joke or what about sticking into this thing? Steph, your question was, “Why do we forget?” Why do we forget? Why do we always forget? Like why? Why? Like had you before, Steph? Had you defined before what success in fitness would mean to you personally?

Steph: Yes, but I think only because I’ve been down this road of having not like I failed at it many times before, right?

Chase: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steph: I’ve done so much hard word in the past handful of years to understand what makes a goal different than one that doesn’t stick, right?

Chase: Yeah.

Steph: I love Corbett’s point, which was that we are not really taught at a young age to understand how to define goals or how to measure success, so I definitely think it’s a learned skill. There’s no question.

Chase: I like that. Anything else we should add to this before signing off, or any other lines of questioning that you guys want to dig into?

Corbett: It’s funny. It’s funny to me. The bottom line I think of all this is really that we all want to feel good about what we’re doing, right? We want to feel like we’ve accomplished something and that we are moving closer to our goals, but how we feel about them is really dependent on how we define them, and so it’s really just this big head game that we play with ourselves.

We could say, for example, like Gary Vaynerchuk, “I want to own a football team one day,” which is the thing that drives him. Most of us would be terribly deflated by that goal because it takes probably 30 or 40 years to get even close to something like that and most of us can’t connect the dots from one thing to the next to feel motivated by that all the time. The rest of us have to define much smaller goals so that we feel good along the way I think, and maybe we have some vision in the back of our mind that we want to be rich and famous or whatever.

We want the usual measures of success, but we have to tell ourselves that what we really want is just to do a good job because we know that doing a good job is the first step towards whatever that bigger vision is, so it’s … I think the head game that you have to play with yourself varies from person to person, but having this conversation, thinking about these things, thinking about how you feel about the goals that you set and whether or not you’re even intentional about the goals that you set, I think that’s really the beginnings of feeling better about it. It’s just being intentional in having these conversations.

Chase: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s such a … I mean, just personally, it’s just been … It had such a profound impact on me, and it’s such a great first question, Steph, because the truth is, is like, “Boy, you never …” Like you just do. You fall off the ladder unless you have a diligent practice, a daily sort of reminder about who you are, what you’re about, what your like direction is … like the direction of your life is basically. You know what I mean?

Steph: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, absolutely.

Chase: I just think that that’s like … I don’t know. Something about that is really coming together for me in like three months maybe of just journaling, and so you guys got to join us on this webinar. I think you’re really going to dig it if … Now, we have to do it, Steph.

Steph: We’re doing it.

Chase: We haven’t planned it at all. I have a lot of like notes and sketches about it, but like we haven’t …

Steph: No. It’s going to be really good because Chase and I haven’t … I feel like we’ve hinted to each other about each other’s processes, but we have not like deeply gone into what the other one does.

Chase: Yeah.

Steph: I actually think they’re quite different.

Chase: Yeah.

Steph: I think that certain people will be suited to different … the different methods, so I think it’s actually going to be two different practices which will be really interesting for people I think.

Chase: I like that. I like that. Okay, guys. Well, listen. Be like Ira Glass. All right? Choose to pursue being great at something instead of just being great. Like what are you going to be great at? Chances are your decision, your answer there has something to do with like where you can be valuable to someone, where you see someone in pain or in suffering that you can help, and I don’t mean … They don’t have to be like wandering down the street with an arm cut off looking for an ER. Though, that certainly is possible.

For me, with business, what I see business is I see people with hope, potential, possibility, and tons of uncertainty and fear, right? I think that that uncertainty and fear is what can keep them from actually making something happen because you need a sense of like peace and trust inside of you to even just try being vulnerable enough to make something for other people sometimes. When you do it from there, you have a much stronger chance of being successful because this thing is not taking energy from you the way it did before. Instead, it’s building up. It’s like filling your tanks with energy.

I love that. That’s what I think about. When I think about Fizzle, I think about that, and I think about how meaningful that is for people to find their own path, right, towards like creative freedom, financial freedom like independence, autonomy, getting to live however the hell you want to, right? I love that. That’s a service to me. When I think of being great at something, I want to be great at helping people do that.

What are you going to be great at? What do you want to pursue becoming great at instead of what we mostly do? I understand why we do it. We just want to be great. We’re just like, “Oh, yeah. I want to be great. I want to be great. I want to be great.” That’s why we’re so frustrated because we’re not defining the thing we want to be great at or what we want to be great for maybe. I have been Chase Wardman Reeves.

Corbett: I’ve been Corbett Barr.

Steph: I have been Steph Crowder.

Chase: I’ll see you there or see you another time.

Steph: See you there, or we’ll see you another time.

Corbett: See you there or see you another time. That is so hard to do.

We appologize for any innacuracies in this transcript. We are still looking for a transcript vendor that can, let us say capture our unique way of doing things 🙂

“A podcast about the real reason why you’re not successful… yet.”
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In this episode we mention a live training webinar happening to help you learn how to use some journaling tools to find more clarity in your decision making and project planning.

Show Notes:

GO Summit (this is the conference Chase originally gave this message at!)

The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business

Every week we talk with entrepreneurs. We talk about what’s working and what isn’t. We talk about successes and failures. We spend time with complete newbies, seasoned veterans, and everything in between.

One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.

These conversations have been fascinating, so we compiled a list of the 10 mistakes we hear most often into a nifty lil' guide.

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